Maria Schneider, the actor who helped introduce explicit sex to mainstream cinema, has died following a long illness. The 58-year-old is best known for her performance in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 drama Last Tango in Paris – a role that came to both define and destroy her acting career.

Schneider was a teenage model when she landed the role opposite Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. The film details the relationship between a young Parisian woman and a middle-aged American hotel manager and was notorious for an improvised, butter-assisted sex scene that resulted in a prohibitive X-rating in the US.

The film made Schneider a star, although she later accused Brando and Bertolucci of exploiting her. She described the director as "a gangster and a pimp", likened the experience to being "raped" and said that Last Tango in Paris had taught her an important lesson: "Never take your clothes off for a middle-aged man who claims that it's art."

Bertolucci, for his part, appeared puzzled by the criticism. "It is true that Maria was very young when we shot the film and maybe she couldn't articulate what happened," he told the Guardian in 2003. "So what remains is a confused moment where I am the killer or the bad guy."

Following Last Tango in Paris, Schneider went on to star alongside Jack Nicholson in The Passenger, an existential thriller by director Michelangelo Antonioni. But her subsequent career was hindered by drug addiction and mental illness.

Schneider's other films include A Woman Like Eve, In the Country of Juliets and the acclaimed Aids drama Savage Nights. Her last significant role was the anguished Mrs Rochester in Franco Zeffirelli's 1996 adaptation of Jane Eyre.